People tell me I look “cute” with short hair. “But it’s not
me!” I want to shout. I’ve always had long hair.

It starts falling out just days after
my first round of chemo. Hair litters
the house, the car, everything. I ask
Cheryl to cut my hair short. “To lessen
the mess,” I say.

People tell me I look “cute” with
short hair. “But it’s not me!” I want to
shout. I’ve always had long hair. So
I order a wig. Long, curly, my natural
shade (not purply-red).

I keep shedding. Growing bare
patches peek through the thinning hair.
I even stop washing it since that seems
to speed up the process.

The morning of my second round of
chemo, I can no longer stand my itchy
scalp. I turn the shower on low and
gently massage what’s left of my hair
with mild shampoo. The hair pours
off my head. I stare at the tub filled
with soapy clumps of hair. I cry;
I can’t help it.

When I get out and look in the mirror,
a stranger looks back at me. My head
is big and shiny. There are two stubborn
strands clinging to each side of
my head. I have my husband, Keith,
shave them off so I can pretend that
bald was my choice.

Keith has bought several hats and
scarves for me. I wear a pink floppy
one to the cancer center that morning.
My head still itches, and whenever
I take off the hat to scratch, there
is a draft!

My wig finally comes in. It’s itchy,
too, but it helps me feel like I have hair,
at least to the extremely near-sighted
casual observer. Later I buy a short,
sassy red wig for those especially bad
days when I needed an attitude to match.
I kind of like being a redhead.

When the treatments are done and
the battle won, I expect the hair to
grow back at least as fast as it does on
my legs. The brows and lashes return
right away, but the hair on my scalp
creeps out so slowly that I worry I’ll
look like a Marine recruit for the rest
of my life.

It does finally start growing. Within
three months, it’s half an inch long, and
by six months, I have thick, tight curls.
“Your hair is so cute,” friends say. I’m
glad to have hair, but it still doesn’t
look like me. I figure the curls will
“relax” as the hair grows longer, but
they spring longer and longer. I look
like Shirley Temple.

Now four years later, my hair is
long again. After two trims, it still
has coiled springs and is almost waist-length,
or would be if it were straight.
It’s thicker than before, with less gray.
I ask my oncologist, “Did you put
fertilizer in my chemo?” She just laughs
and touches one of the curls, admiring
how thick it had become.

Not fertilizer, I decided. Miracle
Grow. After all, I beat cancer AND I
have long hair again.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This article was published in Coping® with Cancer magazine,
November/December
2009.